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One Company's Experience
ARL as an Alternative
Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory

One Company's Experience

For more than a decade, B-K Lighting has used Applied Research Laboratories, Inc., a full-service national and international testing agency-rather than Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to test and certify its new products.

"Our biggest reason for going to ARL initially was cost and much less bureaucracy," says Doug Hagen, president of B-K Lighting in Madera, California. "When we started the business, we were only a low-voltage company, and there was no UL standard to even have the product tested to."

One division of UL sets the standards that electrical products must comply with; a different division does testing and certification. While companies must comply with the UL standard, they need not work with UL to get the proper certification. They may work with any laboratory certified through the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory program, which is overseen by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"As a smaller company at the time, we found ARL and felt we'd be a bigger fish in their pond," he explains. "And we had heard all the horror stories for years about all the UL issues. We didn't have a UL person on staff to help shepherd our products through."

ARL provides testing for compliance to standards for safety and performance testing for a wide variety of consumer products-including lighting and ballasts. The company guided BK throughout the testing and certification process, assuring B-K that its products would be accepted by all counties and cities in the United States.

Today, B-K Lighting has a catalogue of nearly 100 products-all of which are tested and certified to UL standards by ARL.

ARL as an Alternative

"In real dollars we save money by using ARL," says Doug. "But also in 'time dollars.' You often can't put a real hard figure in how much time you save."

"Our people now are highly trained and proficient at working with ARL. Our product delay time in testing is relatively short."

Generally, B-K products are approved in a three- to four-week timeframe. "It can be faster, but it depends on the complexity of the product," Doug explains.

Besides the initial testing, B-K is subject to unannounced factory visits from ARL inspectors every three months, and by CSA (Canadian Standards Association), because they sell into the Canadian market. All manufacturers must pass similar surprise inspections once they receive certification for their products.

ARL is independent of any government or manufacturing organization. It has been testing for consumer safety for more than 50 years. "What we offer different is personalized service, very quick response time and it's not like dealing with the attorney general," says Alan Sukert, director of engineering. Our turn-around time is anywhere from two to seven weeks, depending upon the product."

"And we'll work with them to get products approved-from the design stage all the way through to the end. Our main office is in Miami, Florida, but we go all over for inspections to Beijing, Italy, Germany and France," Sukert explains.

"We also do field testing for one-of-a-kind projects that are not produced in a manufacturing facility or on the production line," he says.

Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories

ARL is one of a number of alternatives to using UL for testing and certification.

"Usually, manufacturers choose three major companies. UL is the one everybody's heard of; they've been around since 1897. Then there's ETL, which is the second largest, and they've been around about 35 years. And there's us, ARL. We've been around since 1949," says Alan.

All three are part of the U.S. government's Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory Program (NRTL), which recognizes certain private sector organizations as qualified to test and certify electrical products.